Last Night
by rainkins
Summary: My take on the woefully omitted Spike/Buffy basement scene in "Chosen." Spoilers abound. If you dislike themes against all laws of nature and Slayerhood, skippage is advised. Requisite disclaimer: I own nothing but my own obsession.
1. A Penny Soul and Tuppence

**"Last Night"**

_1. A Penny Soul and Tuppence_

* * *

He had spent half the day waiting, and still she startled him. The amulet slipped unnoticed from his fingers as he scrambled to his feet. For a long moment they stood, motionless and silent, facing each other across the cluttered basement. Things he had meant to say, important things… what were they? Her presence was too immediate, too real. He wished he were anywhere else. "Oh, God," he breathed, and someone must have answered, because suddenly she was in his arms again.

He had promised himself that tonight he would give her anything she wanted, but he had half hoped it wouldn't be this. He was afraid of what he might do, terrified of what he knew she would do to him. Her lips grazed his neck and the heat surged through him. He hated his flesh for yielding so helplessly. If he was going to say anything, it had to be now; five seconds from now he wouldn't have the strength. "I'd almost rather we didn't, love," he muttered hoarsely, trying to mean it.

She released him instantly, recoiling as if burned. Disbelief and indignation struggled for dominance in her face. Both were flattering. If she were only the slightest bit less desirable, he was sure he could hate her for being so desirable. "You'd rather… okay. That's okay. We can just… sleep." Feigning carelessness, she stepped past him and curled up on the cot with her face to the wall.

The ghost of her touch lingered on his skin, aching like a wound. This was impossible. How could he lie quietly beside her for another night with this fire raging in his chest? To hell with honor. "I said _almost_, pet. I'm not a bloody poof, you know. Well, of course _you_ know – _ow_, sodding hell!"

"Sorry." She had grabbed his shirt and pulled him down on top of her with such sudden force that his head hit the concrete wall with a rather impressive thunk. "Here, let me –"

"Make it better? No worries, love. Pain's already gone." At the very least, he needed to kiss her first. It meant something or other. Trying to ignore the squeezing sense of airlessness an unbreathing creature should never feel, he crushed her mouth with his and prayed to whatever immortal types might be listening that he wasn't wrong again.

Before the soul, she hadn't minded when he was wrong. She had liked it, even – the dark and the stain of it. Except the last time, when she had suddenly expected him to know the rules, even though he knew she was making them up as she went along. If she wanted him now, it meant she had forgiven him, and that meant she thought the soul had changed him.

It hadn't. He had changed, but not for the reasons she thought, and earlier than she thought. Long before the night it all went south, the man had awakened and subdued the freeloading monster. It was the man, the same man he was now, that had pushed her to open herself to him, to feel him, to feel _something_. It was what he always did. It was what he thought she wanted.

Afterward, she said he had tried to rape her. He hadn't, of course – if he had tried, he would have bloody well succeeded – but it hardly offended his delicate sensibilities to hear her say it. He was no stranger to rape, after all, nor mass murder nor puppy killings nor a thousand other crimes more heinous than she would ever dare imagine. He knew what he was before her, and he had never pretended otherwise.

After that night in her bathroom, it wasn't his violence toward her that haunted him. He had done worse – pushed her farther, violated her more completely – and she had screamed with pleasure and begged for more. No, what drove him half-mad with rage and self-loathing was that for the first time he had misjudged what she wanted from him. He thought it was like the night he had given her permission to let him in by saying she came back wrong. He thought she wanted an excuse again, so he had tried to give it to her, and instead he had hurt her in a way he was sure he never could.

Now, as she pulled him closer and kissed him with a hunger so much like love he knew he would soon forget it wasn't, he was furious and terrified that she didn't understand. He had gone in search of his soul that night, and she thought the change in him had come after he regained it. She thought he was the same as Angel now – Angel, that sanctimonious prig who only existed when Angelus was ensouled. But he was nothing like Angel. She was the thing that had changed him, not the second-rate soul he had won for her like some ruddy prize at the county fair. If he needed the soul to make him regret hurting her, he would never have sought it, and the weight of it under his skin didn't deliver him from evil any more than any other man. If she asked him to sin, he would sin. Soul or no soul, he would do any unspeakable thing without hesitation if he thought for a second it was what she wanted.

She was kissing him more purposefully now, tugging impatiently at his clothes. With a flick of her wrist his belt went clattering across the cold concrete floor. She tried to roll him onto his back, but the cot was too narrow and they both tumbled to the floor. He hit his head again. This time she didn't apologize. His chest hurt worse than his head; it threatened to crack under a weight that had nothing to do with her slender frame pinning him to the concrete.

"Wait," he said in a thin voice he didn't recognize. "I can't." He crawled out from beneath her and leaned against the edge of the cot, hugging his knees, feeling nearly as unhinged as when he had been tormented by the First in the basement of Sunnydale High. "That is, I _can_, quite aptly as you know, and you're a damn sexy minx and I'm randy as a bug-wanking rhino but it's not… we're not… this is just smoke and mirrors. I've never been keen on mirrors."

"Uh-huh." She stretched out on the floor, cupping her chin in her hands. "Look, I don't know about you, but I have kind of an epic battle with the forces of darkness scheduled for…" She paused to glance at a nonexistent watch. "…oh, seven hours from now. Maybe you could wake me when you start making sense and/or hire a crazy-vampire-to-English translator, huh?"

He tried to laugh, as he knew she meant for him to do. He was easier for her when he was laughing – easier to hate, to fuck, to dropkick, whatever. Made him seem less human, maybe. He didn't feel particularly human just now, but he felt even less like laughing. "You know this is it for us, don't you, love? This here, tonight?"

Her teasing smile disappeared instantly; she looked as if he had struck her. "You think we're going to lose?" she asked in a small, hard-edged voice.

This time his laughter was real. "What, us, bested by that poncey root-of-all-evil character? Don't be daft. We've faced worse than he/she/it in a Sunday hat. Hell, half those slayer juniors upstairs could take the manky pillock alone while we kip with a cuppa. Not a bad plan, actually."

"Make that crazy-vampire-to-_American_-English. Which is to say, howha?" She was still lying on her stomach on the concrete, feet kicking the air, so innocently tantalizing. He wanted to touch her; he always wanted so badly to touch her.

He tightened his grip on his knees and said, "Here's the rub, pet. Little Miss Witch works her hoodoo and upgrades the slayerettes to full supergirl status, we grandly trounce the evil army of Uruk-hai –"

"Turok-Han."

"Whatever. Greater Sunnydale is safe again for democracy and kittens, and for the first time the exalted Buffy Summers gets to be the one thing she wants and fears most – ordinary." He waited for her to react to this, but she simply continued watching him, kicking her feet and betraying no emotion. All right then; if she was waiting for him to get it out of his system, he just damn well would. "And where will she go the moment she's free?" he continued. "Not back to the dank of a basement with her undead former shag partner, that's for bloody true."

"Spike –"

"The second you have a shot at normal, Buffy, you'll go to Angel. You'll beat down the gormless do-gooder's sodding door. I saw that when I saw you with him last night. He's it for you. That's why you sent him packing – to make sure your white knight is still standing when the dust clears."

"You… you shirty dope." She pulled herself up to face him, legs tucked beneath her. She sat too close; her scent was everywhere. "I told Angel to go in case we fail, not in case we succeed. I need someone to pick up the pieces if everything falls apart. Besides…" She reached for the amulet that had clattered to the floor and twirled the heavy chain between her fingers. "I already have my champion for this fight."

He snorted derisively. "World-class git your champion is, ready to valiantly win the day so you can run off and snog your backup champion."

"I'm here now," she said softly. "I'm not running anywhere." Her little hand covered his. Why couldn't she see how her tenderness was killing him? "I'm here with you and I don't need you making me feel like the slut queen of Slutdonia by droning on about my other boyfriends."

"I was never your boyfriend."

That did it. Exasperation overcame affection and she put some much-needed distance between them. He was still suffocating, but at least now it would take a little longer. "What do you want?" she demanded. "Do you want me to say it's me and Angel, that's the happy ending? Maybe it is. But this isn't the end. Yes, I love Angel, but you and I –"

"Don't," he said quickly, needing her not to finish that sentence. "You don't feel anything like love for me, and anything you say different will just be words."

She sighed heavily. She was tired of this, of him. He knew she was ready to walk away, find a spare bit of floor upstairs and sleep alone until dawn. He was almost ready to let her. "Okay," she said flatly, "so you don't want sex and you don't want words. What's left? For God's sake, just tell me what you want."

"What I want?" He wanted a lot of things. He wanted a Viper. He wanted to walk in sunlight and not burn. He wanted to see Angel walk in sunlight _with_ the burning. He wanted to go back a hundred years and drain that gypsy wench himself so that now he would be the golden boy with the grand destiny and Angel would be the discarded also-ran. Most of all, he wanted…

"I want one night," he said, "when I'm not a joke to you, or a diversion or a bloody substitute teacher. I want to make love to you, just once, and I want you to lie and say it matters."

"Make love?" she repeated incredulously. "Boy, you really are a girl. We fucked, Spike. We did some world-class, spine-tingly fucking, but when did we ever –"

"Oh, Buffy." After all this time, she still believed she had been following his lead. It was too absurd, really, her thinking he had ever had the barest scrap of power in their relationship, as if a lapdog on a leash had any sense of control. She had commanded him with her body and her eyes – _make me feel, make it dirty, make it meaningless_ – and he had obeyed, nothing more. He had only ever been along for the ride; she had always held the reins. "You've no idea, love," he said, "no idea the things I wanted to do to you."

"Then show me." It was a challenge. She wanted to know, wanted it badly, maybe even had an inkling of the hunger that consumed him, but she wasn't about to say pretty please. She sat poised, expectant, waiting for him to take the dare.

He didn't move. Not this time. This time, this once, he needed just a little more than her lofty directives. Whatever she said, he knew this was their last night, and he didn't fancy spending it rolling over and playing dead.

They circled each other without moving, facing off like fighters in a ring. But he knew she was tired of fighting, and even more tired of waiting to fight. "Okay," she said at last, admitting defeat. "If you want to call it love, if that makes it matter for you, go ahead and call it love. Call it Bulgarian chicken wrestling for all I care. Work with me here, Spike. Just… please. Can that be good enough?"

She was so earnest, so childlike. He saw it in her pleading eyes: she believed him now, finally… but only because she thought he was like Angel. She thought the soul made it possible for him to love her – the soul he had only struggled to regain to prove he had loved her all along.

He laughed a little, and she seemed reassured. _Always give the lady what she wants_. "It'll do," he said as he drew her into his arms again.


	2. Those Sanguine Groundless Hopes

**"Last Night"**

_2. Those Sanguine Groundless Hopes_

* * *

She could feel him breathing. Short, staccato bursts of air shook his chest and escaped in hot puffs against her throat. Before Spike, she had never thought of vampires breathing. Being the slayer meant focusing on the demon part of the vampire, and the demon certainly never needed to breathe. But it seemed the human part often did – not to survive, but to speak and to sing and even (as she knew firsthand) to snore. Often Spike breathed for no particular reason at all, as if it were simply another habit left over from his former self.

Was that all that was happening here? Were the rough gasps that made his cold flesh shudder against hers just an empty vestige of mortal life? Or were they for her sake, to show her what she wouldn't let him say? For whatever reason, Spike was breathing deeply now, drawing great quantities of air into dead, shriveled lungs… and now he had stopped.

Startled by his sudden stillness, she nearly asked if he was okay before realizing how monumentally stupid a question that was. Instead she said hesitantly, "Did you, um… did you already…?"

"Yeah, sorry," he panted. (_Breathless_, she thought, and fought a crazy urge to laugh.) "Been a while."

"No, it's okay," she said quickly, sorry to have embarrassed him. "I did too."

"Did you?"

"Kind of a lot." She reached up and threaded her fingers through the downy hair on the back of his neck; pulling him closer, she ran her teeth lightly along the line of his collarbone and felt the shiver run through him. "You couldn't tell?"

"Wasn't sure." He rolled onto his side and began tracing lazy circles on her damply glistening stomach. "Harder with you so quiet. Times past, the feral screaming was a helpful cue."

"Yeah, well, if the troops were to hear their fearless leader having screaming basement sex with the evil dead, I don't think it would exactly bolster their confidence for tomorrow."

"That's evil _un_dead, I'll thank you to recall," he said haughtily. "And I'll wager it would be a damn sight better motivation to finish this fool campaign than another of your bloody speeches."

"Hey!" She pulled away in mock indignation. He grabbed her from behind and wrestled her into his embrace. She laughed, pinned and wriggling like a butterfly in his arms. Then gently, too gently, he blew on the back of her neck. _Breathing again_.

"Buffy?" He was trembling and hard as he pressed against her.

"Again?"

"Er, still. One more for the road?"

"Better than Dungeons and Dragons." She gave an involuntary whimper as he entered her – a completely embarrassing noise, like a baby animal. Hoping he hadn't noticed, she began to rock her hips against him.

"Don't," he whispered, halting the motion with a steady hand. "Don't move. Just let me be in you." His voice was raw with longing, as if this were the thing he craved most in the world.

She closed her eyes and made herself as still as possible. Her heart hammered ruthlessly against her ribs, and she wished she could subdue it. She knew he could feel the hot blood flowing just underneath her skin.

They lay there together, motionlessly entwined, for minutes that felt like forever. She wondered if he really believed this was the end for them. She wondered if she wanted him to believe it. Mostly she wondered what the fuck she was doing spending the night before the impending apocalypse naked in a dead man's arms.

He made one small sound, a sharp intake of breath, as if something had surprised him, and then his release tore through her. He pulled her closer as he came, knuckles white, fingernails digging like talons, desperate to tear the veil of flesh that separated them. His body trembled like earth split open by seismic waves; he seemed held together only loosely, on the verge of combusting into particles of ash.

This wasn't about slaking his lust anymore. Maybe it never had been. She understood now: he was trying to submerge his entire being into her little frame, to become nothing but this moment of fusion. He wanted to be inside her, not just physically but chemically, to be the oxygen and blood in her veins. She understood, and it frightened her.

Then it was over. Without warning, he broke apart from her and said lightly, "Thanks, pet. As consolation prizes go, that was a right growler."

A sickening sense of vertigo accompanied her realization that he was returning to business as usual, as if the last few minutes had never happened. Weakly attempting a conversational tone, she replied, "I assume that means something dirty."

"Well, bugger me backwards, she's cottoning on." He began rummaging under the edge of the cot's thin mattress; after a moment his search produced a squashed, half-empty pack of cigarettes. He pulled one out and put it between his lips, then gestured to the pile of clothes on the floor. "Lighter's in my pocket… would you mind?"

She dug the lighter out of his jeans and lit it for him. The tiny flame cast shadows against his pale skin as she held it close to his face and watched the cigarette tip begin to glow. He took a long drag, then flopped onto his back and blew smoke at the ceiling. "Goldilocks," he said thoughtfully. "Remember? I loved your hair short like that, even though you only did it because you hated me."

She looked at the lighter in her hand. A strange jumble of sensations – wistfulness, longing, disgust – churned uncomfortably in her abdomen. "It wasn't you I hated," she said softly.

Another smoky breath escaped him in a chuckle as her inner turbulence grew audible in the way of a loud tummy rumble. "Speaking of growlers…"

She felt herself blushing as she tried to remember how long she had gone without food. In the weeks since Caleb had arrived on the scene, she had gotten in the habit of skipping meals unless someone forced her to take the time to eat. Now, quite suddenly, she realized she was ravenous.

Spike directed her to a stash of half-eaten snacks behind the washing machine. They sat together on the cot for a while; he finished his cigarette, and she inhaled an astonishing number of snack cakes and candy bars after carefully divesting each one of a sticky note marked "Andrew" in large block letters. If anyone had come downstairs, they would have seen what looked like two friends enjoying a companionable silence… except that all their clothes still lay in a heap on the floor.

When she was down to her last Twinkie, she asked if he had eaten. He took one final drag on the butt of his cigarette, then crushed it into one of her discarded wrappers and replied, "Not really a snack cake kind of bloke, pet, but thanks for asking."

"No, I mean… have you fed?"

"Oh." He coughed and shifted on the cot so that his back was against the wall. "Not today. Couple days, maybe. There's some cow's blood in the fridge that Andrew scrounged me when the butcher blew out of Dodge – might not be totally coagulated. I'll toss it in the blender in the morning." There had been a time when he relished any mention of a meal, but now it made him visibly self-conscious. Maybe he felt the stark reminder of his vampire nature put too much distance between them, or maybe the act of feeding had lost its allure without the accompanying thrill of the hunt.

Or maybe cow's blood just tasted gross. She didn't know, and she wasn't especially interested in finding out. But she did know one thing, and after struggling and almost-but-not-quite succeeding to hush the voice in her head still demanding to know what the hell she thought she was doing, she said it loud. "There's another option, you know."

"No," he said quickly, and his voice was cold as death. "There's not." In a forcedly lighter tone, he added, "Unless you've decided to sacrifice a Slayerette or two for my dietary needs, in which case be my guest and welcome."

"No. Not the girls. But you're stronger when you drink human blood, right? I'm going to need you strong tomorrow. And Slayer blood… it's like the Red Bull of human, right?"

He stared at her for fully ten seconds, his eyes wide and lips slightly parted. Then he leaned his head against the wall and closed his eyes. "I'll just be over here when you return from leave of your senses, pet."

Her tenuous determination wavered. Giles and Willow and especially Xander would have her committed, or shot, or maybe both, if they knew what she was suggesting. The only person who might have understood was Tara, but Tara was gone. There was still time to take it back, to pass it off as a bad joke. He would let her; he would even believe her if she asked him to.

But she wasn't joking, and she wanted him to know it, even if it was (and it very probably was) the dumbest idea she'd ever had. Sure, it violated all the laws of nature and Slayerhood and her friends would most likely kill her… but so what, really? Dying was old news to her; it was living she needed to figure out, and right now that started with telling Spike the truth. He had earned that much at least.

"It's more than just practical," she said. "It's… I want to do this. Look at me, Spike. I'm not kidding."

Two narrow slivers of blue surveyed her dubiously for a moment. Then he closed his eyes again.

She took a deep breath and pressed on. "If everything goes exactly right, I'm going to be sharing my power with all those girls upstairs. They're untested and unproven, and I'm entrusting them with the essence of the Slayer. Not one of them deserves it more than you." She paused a moment, then added, "Besides, I've been bitten before, so it's not like –"

"Okay."

His sudden acquiescence surprised her into silence. She hadn't expected him to succumb so quickly. "Okay?" she said tentatively.

In response, he grabbed her by both shoulders and threw her down on her back, quite hard, to show he meant business. His face loomed over her, all shadow and line, like something out of a B-movie horror flick. "Anything to cut short another of your bloody boring speeches," he teased. She could almost taste the smoke lingering on his breath. After all this time, its acrid sweetness still smelled like sex to her.

"Bite me," she said playfully. Until his face began to change, she didn't really believe he would dare.

She was mesmerized as the well-known features shifted and distended into a malformed caricature that was at once grotesque and absurd. She had never seen the transformation in such close detail before. When it was done, the impudently smirking man was still faintly visible beneath the vacant guise of the monster.

"My pleasure," he said, his voice thick with teeth now perversely stretched and deadly sharp. With unnatural agility, he repositioned himself so that his body hovered over hers, achingly close but not quite making contact, trapping her without touching her. His fangs were inches from her throat. She was Little Red alone with the wolf after all, but no huntsman was coming with his axe to save her. That was supposed to be her job, too.

She closed her eyes. _Just do it_, she thought.

As if in reply, he buried his face in her neck… but instead of the swift stab of pain she expected, she felt only the soft touch of a gentle kiss. The knife edge of his extended canines raised gooseflesh on her skin as his tongue worked slowly down the curve of her neck, the valley between her breasts, the smooth slope of her stomach, and then…

_Oh_.

Well, this wasn't quite what she'd had in mind, but she wasn't about to complain. She opened her eyes and raised herself up on her elbows to look down at him, expecting to see the human face again, but the eyes that met hers were yellow and glowed like a cat's. His unconcealed fangs were cold as bone against the fragile skin between her legs, but his lips and tongue moved around them so deftly that they never even scratched her.

This was new. In all their kinky little trysts, all the wanton ways they had used each other, he had never once gone into game face when they had sex. Having seen how easily rage and arousal could trigger the change, she imagined it had cost him a lot of effort to maintain his normal appearance when they were together. She knew why he had done it, though. She knew he had thought that staying as human as possible was the only way he could convince her to love him.

Now, as she watched a gruesome smile spread across the distorted yet bizarrely familiar features, she knew he had given up trying to win her heart. He wanted her to see him like this, to feel herself writhing with desire as the hideous mouth pressed against her lower lips. He wanted her to know that the monster could make her scream with pleasure as readily as the man.

The ceiling was starting to spin. Prickles of heat radiated from her center; her legs felt like jelly, and her fingers were numb. She arched her back and chewed her lip to keep from crying out. Her hips bucked. She was suspended on the brink of ecstasy… she was slipping… she was starting to fall… and then with one rough grunt and the wet crunch of tearing flesh, he plunged his fangs into her thigh and let the hot blood flow.

She gasped and tried to reclaim herself, but it was too late; the shock had pushed her over the edge. The climax took her in waves, drowning her senses. For a long moment, even the pain felt like bliss. He drank easily as her pounding heart drove the blood from the wound. She could feel it even after it left her… bathing his tongue, sliding down his throat, flooding his body… becoming part of him.

When the mindless euphoria began to subside, she noticed how weak she felt. Was he taking too much? The blood seemed to be flowing slowly, which probably meant that he had pierced a vein, not an artery, which would be… good? She suddenly realized she knew next to nothing about vampire feeding habits. It had never seemed relevant. Giles had given her a pamphlet once, but she had just glanced at the pictures and tossed it back with a breezy remark about how any vamp who crossed her wouldn't be feeding again anytime soon.

Now she felt giddy and lightheaded, and she wasn't sure if it was in a fun way or a massive-blood-loss kind of way. She didn't know how much more he could drink without endangering her life, and she didn't know if he knew either. Was he still in control, still the man who would do anything to please her, or had the bloodlust awakened the demon that wanted nothing more than to drain her dead?

Just in case, she scanned her surroundings for a weapon within reach. The basement was full of them; Xander had seen to that when Spike moved in. He had drawn her a diagram, insisted that she memorize it – hoped, maybe, that she would need it. She mentally inventoried the concealed items: throwing knives hooked underneath the table, a crossbow tucked behind the hot water tank… and there, not three feet away, in a toolbox on the metal shelf beside the cot, a well-worn stake.

She was on the point of reaching for it when he released her. Fangs withdrew from flesh with a soft sucking sound, and the blood flowed unobstructed, slow and steady. He retrieved his black t-shirt from the floor and wrapped it gently around her leg. His face changed again, the demon's permanent scowl dissolving into the almost elegant features of his usual form. The mouth that just a moment before had been terrifying, stained and dripping with her blood, was now almost comical; he looked like a little boy caught eating strawberry jam with his fingers.

Fleetingly, she wondered which was the real face and which was the mask. She had always thought of Angel's human face as his true appearance, and in recent months she had begun to see Spike the same way: the cold blue eyes and mocking mouth belonged to the warrior she had come to trust more than anyone (sometimes even herself), while the vampire's fangs and menacing brow were nothing more than a façade. But maybe she had the answer backwards, or maybe she was asking the wrong question in the first place. Why couldn't she have just swallowed her Slayer hubris and read the goddamn pamphlet?

Spike sat watching her expectantly, waiting for her to speak first. She wanted to ask a lot of things, not least whether she was in immediate danger of death by desanguination, but what she actually heard herself say was, "What do I taste like?"

"O-negative," he quipped before stretching out beside her. He looked at the toolbox on the shelf and grinned. "You were well fit to stake me, weren't you, baby?" Cold fingers idly traced lines on her neck – jugular, carotid… which was the artery and which was the vein? "Might have been easier to let you."

Lips still slick with blood pressed against hers. The heady, metallic tang mingled with the smell and the taste of him – cool sweat and stale cigarettes, death and endless want. "Don't fret, pet, you'll be fine by morning. Didn't take much. I would never…" His voice dropped to a whisper. "Don't you know that by now? That I'll never hurt you again?"

And there it was, the future tense. Whatever he said about this being the end for them, she saw the truth in every contour of his human face. Every square inch of him was teeming with hope – hope for another night, another embrace, another chance to make her well and truly his. He had lied when he said he wanted to make love to her just once. The hope in his eyes – that stubborn, groundless hope – made it clear that some part of him believed, against all sense and logic, that once could still become forever.

Stupid lovesick optimist. He should have known better. And yet she found herself envying him, wanting powerfully to preserve the lie and half-wishing she could believe it was true. "I know you won't hurt me," she said. "Not now. Your soul…"

He snorted indignantly. "Is rubbish, and others have done worse with better. A penny soul never came to tuppence."

"I assume that also means something dirty," she said, smiling at his relapse into nonsensical Britishisms.

He shrugged. "Bugger me. Just something me mum used to say… erm, before I killed her… twice."

"Okay," she announced after dealing with that sentence for a moment, "I think this officially concludes share time."

"Got something better to do, have you?" He was grinning again.

"I'm sure I can think of something." She twisted her fingers through his blood-streaked hair and pulled him into a fervent kiss. He responded as he always did, as if she had switched on an electric current that ran through his entire body, crackling with energy. Within seconds he was lost to himself, defenseless, a willing slave whose world was empty of everything but her. He was right: she would never feel what he felt – not for him, maybe not for anyone. And he was right that he would never hurt her again. She would never let him.

_Oh well_, she thought as she sank beneath his familiar weight and tried to abandon herself, just for tonight, to the hollow, entrancing lie that sustained his captive soul. There remained a few hours to fill before dawn, and this was still better than Dungeons and Dragons.

_-finis-_


End file.
